Floyd County High School’s Lady Buffs varsity basketball team pulled out an impressive victory against scrappy Radford Friday night to bring their season record to 17-1 overall and 8-0 in district play.

The 67-60 win made up for the 68-41 massacre that Radford handed to the boys’ team on Thursday night.

Looks like another championship season for the Lady Buffs. Better make reservations for Richmond. (Photo from 2008 championship run in Richmond)

(Updated on Feb. 2 to replace photo because original shot was from a JV game)

Contamination in water lines at Floyd County High School Thursday prompted anxious phone calls from students to parents.

FCHS principal Barry Hollandsworth took quick action to close off the two contaminated lines, posted a letter to parents on the school’s web site and sent copies home with students.

Hollandsworth said a pressure valve malfunctioned in the school’s boiler system and contaminated water in the cafeteria kitchen and a restroom. Students were warned to not wash their hands in ther rest rooms or drink water from the school’s water fountains. The school furnished hand sanitizers and bottled water to students.

I shot a basketball game at FCHS Thursday night and the fountains were working.

Quick action by Hollandsworth and school officials kept parents informed and help allay their fears.  The school avoided a backlash from parents like the one that occured in December 2007 when a water problem at Willis Elementary School was downplayed and buried in the back pages of a newsletter.

UPDATE (Feb. 2, 1:55 p.m.): School officials say they are still working on the problem. The letter from Hollandworth did not say the problem has been  corrected although another school official told me last Thursday night that "the water is fine."

Bonnie Erbe, an excellant columnist whose work appears often on one of my news web sites, filed an interesting piece this week on a religious harassment case involving Blacksburg Middle School.

Writes Erbe:

Judith Scott probably never set out to be a First Amendment heroine. But she is as far as I’m concerned. Scott has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia for what she claims was a retaliatory firing. Her proselytizing boss at the Blacksburg, Va. Middle School, whose acts are detailed in her court filing, kept trying to force her to participate in unlawful prayer meetings and religious events at work.

I learned about Scott in the Collegiate Times, the campus newspaper of Virginia Tech. Driving to Blacksburg from Washington, D.C., one passes signs for Christendom College and other reminders that one is traversing Bible country. Small towns dot the angled landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Times reports that Scott was asked by her supervisor whether an unnamed person could "pray for her" and she complied out of a sense of pressure. She later declined to attend a religious conference with faculty members and was deluged by them with Christian-themed DVDs and audiotapes upon their return.

"The suit alleges that the supervisor would dim the library’s lights, hold prayer meetings, ‘anoint’ the premises and ‘lay hands’ on those present. The supervisor would also leave ‘praise’ sticky notes and daily Bible verses around for Scott to see."

The Times goes on to describe the pressure put on Scott to practice Christianity in what became a hostile work environment. It never explains whether Scott is a non-believer or a believer of a different faith. But she clearly put up with a huge amount of religious harassment before she filed her lawsuit.

She took her case first to the assistant school board superintendent and was offered a transfer to another facility. But she stood her ground and said she wanted to continue working as a media aid assistant right where she was, as she had done nothing wrong. That takes guts! When her contract ended it was not renewed. She claimed she was in essence, fired, in retaliation for her complaints.

I’m not surprised Scott came under attack by religious zealots. Whenever I dare write something that suggests a minister or religious fanatic has overstepped their bounds my email box fills with messages of hate in the name of God and I often find religious material slid under the door of my studio.

It does surprise me, however, that this happened in Blacksburg, home of a giant state university and a community supposedly more enlightened when it comes to the First Amendment and religious freedom.

Our founding fathers had the right idea when it came to separation of church and state. Everyone has a right to believe or not believe in a supreme being. Everyone has a right to practice or not practice religion. No one has a right to force their religious beliefs on others.

We often find religious material on our doorstep, left by those who see themselves as traveling salesmen for God. A black hearse often cruises the streets of Floyd, covered with signs warning us that doomsday is coming and urging us to get right with the Lord. Local ministers use the power of their pulpit to stop the Commonwealth from opening an ABC store in Floyd or to attempt to stop a microbrewery from opening.

At least one of our supervisors demands to know where candidates from office stand on requiring prayer in schools. He thinks it should be mandated.

Erbe writes:

President Bush’s eight-year tenure, in which religion formed and mis-formed federal laws, trumped science in federal policy and even may have been partly responsible for launching an unsuccessful war, allowed situations such as Scott’s to flourish throughout the land. This is hardly the only way in which the Bush presidency took us back 50 years. It is, however, a dominant theme of his tenure as is the takeover of the Republican Party by the religious right.

Judith Scott is hardly alone. One need only peruse the Web sites of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (au.org) or the Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf.org) to find documentation of countless instances of religious discrimination perpetrated, even encouraged, during the Bush years. Americans United has a nine-point agenda it is asking Obama to follow. The group is asking him to ban faith-based job bias (as faced by Scott), restrict faith-based funding and end school vouchers (which are nothing but a federal bonanza for Christian and religious schools.)

Religion is a personal matter. So is an individual’s relationship with God or whatever supreme being he or she may or may not accept.

A few years ago, a young man with religious sayings pinned to his clothing became a familiar sight in downtown Floyd. He approached me on day and, in a loud voice, asked: "Have you found God?"

I looked at him in shock: "Lord no! Is he missing?"

No, God isn’t missing. He’s just waiting for us at home.

A few days ago, a Floyd Countian told me he would lose his job if Volvo cuts any more employees.

"I’m near the bottom on the seniority list," he said. "You know the rule: Last hired, first fired."

On Tuesday, Volvo announced it will cut 650 jobs at its Dublin truck plant. Other Floyd Countians will lose their jobs as well.  Corning announced it will trim 3,500 jobs at its plants, including their operations in Christiansburg. A number of Floyd Countians work their as well.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve talked to more than a dozen county residents who either lost their jobs since Dec. 1 or expect to lose them in the coming weeks.  On Monday, 70,000 employees lost their jobs nationwide. Few expect to find new jobs in the immediate future. Nobody’s hiring.

Goodyear will close its Radford plant Friday. Most Circuit City employees lost their jobs when the company hired a liquidator to sell off remaining stock and lock the doors. One was a Floyd County High School student who worked at the Roanoke store on evenings and weekends to make money for college. More than 100 retail businesses — large and small — have closed or announced they will close in the Roanoke and New River Valley since Christmas.

The layoffs will ripple through the county and place strain on already-overstressed resources. Carl Ayers at the Floyd County Department of Social Services expects an increase in applications for assistance and food stamps. Businesses face declining sales because people don’t have money for even basic staples.

I see it in clients who used to pay on time but now take longer to settle up their accounts. A city government that owes me money from a job completed back in October cites "cash flow problems" as an excuse for not paying.

Floyd County has a strong barter economy where services are exchanged for services or food or necessities. That could be a salvation for some unemployed workers who can put their skills as a carpenter, electrician or mechanic to work for those willing to barter.

New President Barack Obama warns we should expect things to get worse before they get better. The news this week confirms that warning.

Roanoke Times editorial writer Christian Trejbal, a lightning rod who stirs up even more controversy than this web site, recently found a pattern involving the Superintendent of Floyd County’s school system and the superintendent’s son, who runs the school system in Giles County.

Writes Trejbal:

Most schools closed on King’s holiday, as they do every year, but not schools in Floyd and Giles counties.

MLK Day, the third Monday of January, has been a national holiday since Ronald Reagan signed it into law in 1983. The states, however, had to adopt it individually, and some did so more quickly than others. Today all of them recognize it in one form or another.

In Virginia, lawmakers first tied it to Lee-Jackson Day. That odd juxtaposition of Confederate generals and civil rights crusader ended in 2000, when the General Assembly moved Lee-Jackson Day to the Friday before MLK Day.

But just as Congress refused to impose MLK Day on the states, the commonwealth did not impose it on local schools. Most state offices shut down, but school boards and superintendents decide whether classes meet.

The state Department of Education does not track which schools take the day off, but in the New River Valley, it’s everyone except the two school systems headed by the Arbogasts. That’s father Terry Arbogast and son Terry Arbogast II, the superintendents of Floyd and Giles schools respectively, where only 2 percent of the students in each county are black.

The elder Arbogast did not return calls for nearly three weeks seeking comment and only obliquely answered questions posed by e-mail. At least the younger one was willing to talk about the Giles policy.

Giles schools set the holiday aside as a makeup day. If there are no weather cancellations before it, students and teachers get the day off. This year, there was a snow day on Nov. 18, so class was in session on Monday. Most years there is a snow day.

In the father’s schools, they do not even have the pretense. School is in session on MLK Day most years. This year was an exception because it happened to fall at the end of a term. Kids got the day off, but teachers and staff worked.

Some comments to Christian’s column accused him of calling the Arbogasts racists — a charge he denies — and of hyprocrisy because the Times publishes on MLK day (the day is, in fact, a paid holiday for employees of the Times).

Few places around here recognize MLK day as a holiday, which is not surprising. Those who recognize both MLK day and Lee-Jackson Day get a four-day weekend, which isn’t bad if you are willing to overlook the irony of beginning the weekend celebrating two Confederate generals and ending it in remembrance of a civil rights leader.

I don’t believe Terry Arbogast is racist. However, I do see a pattern in his reluctance to discuss the question with Trejbal. He doesn’t trust the media and was openly critical of The Roanoke Times at the last meeting of the board of supervisors for the paper’s reporting of the state budget crisis and its effect on schools. He also told others that I "misrepresented" his remarks during a confrontation with supervisors over a budget issue last year although he never addressed those concerns to me directly nor did he ever ask for a correction to the story I wrote for The Floyd Press.

Arbogast is a tireless promoter of Floyd County schools. His appearances at the county board of supervisors meetings are entertaining presentations that are part carnival barker and part evangelical preacher but his reports are sometimes long on hyperbole and short on detail.

The final decision on whether or not Floyd County schools stay open or closed on MLK day is made by Floyd’s school board based on the recommendation of the school superintendent. In the past, the board has been less-than-candid with county residents and parents. In 2007, the board downplayed lead contamination found in two water fountains at Willis Elementary School.

Had Arbogast been open and candid with an editorial writer from the Times, the tone of the story might have been different. It’s easy to find hints of racism, especially when a public official avoids discussing the matter with the media. A school superintendent, of all people, should remember just how easy perception can become reality in today’s society.